Inferno of Love
by Marlred
Summary: This story is the third novel in a series of FanFiction for the show "Ashes of Love", a Wuxia drama from Mainland China known there as "香蜜沉沉烬如霜". The first two FanFiction novels of this series are called "From the Ashes of Love", and "Fresh Embers of Love", and both can be found here. Look for a return of Runyu!


**Chapter 1**

Guihua, the Osmanthus Spirit, slowly ascended into the sky, her gaze focused on the beautiful young man below her. She had cast a spell of invisibility on herself, and a spell of memory modification on the young man, so Guihua was not particularly worried about her surroundings.

She watched him walk away, followed by the young girl who had accompanied him, and sighed with longing. She wanted to stay with Runyu, even if he didn't remember who he was, but she knew that was not a good idea. She must leave him behind.

Runyu had been born into the Mortal Realm for a reason. Even though Guihua did not know what the reason was, she must respect him enough to let him live out his mortal lifetime. It wouldn't take long for his mortal body to die, and then his pure Dragon Spirit would ascend to the Heavenly Realm. For her the years would pass by very quickly, a tiny drop of water in the vast ocean of time.

The boy's figure dwindled to the size of a small ant on the surface of the world, as Guihua rose higher and higher into the air, until her searching eyes could no longer see him. She sighed again, her gaze lifting to take in the surroundings, and she suddenly froze.

"Where am I?" she asked herself, staring in open mouthed wonder.

The Mortal Realm was unrecognizable to her now. When she had planted herself there, on the banks of the river, there had been a modest human settlement nearby, but the landscape had been dominated by trees. Now, the trees were all but extinct.

Tall spires of mirrored metal had replaced the trees, towering over the landscape, interspersed with an undergrowth of human structures built of rock and brick and wood and glass.

Guihua looked to the horizon, and could not see the end of this settlement. She turned to face the East, and saw that the structures extended all the way to the great Bay, and then suddenly cut off there, but massive ships floated on the water's surface, extending the range of the human occupation.

"Is the entire world covered by this blight?" Guihua asked herself in horror.

A loud noise of rushing wind sounded above her, startling her. She looked up to see a large bird, as big as a Dragon, formed of metal, descending towards the surface. It roared as it passed her, otherwise ignoring her, and flew onward. Guihua's heartbeat accelerated, a feeling of fear starting to overpower her.

She drifted to a nearby spire, allowing herself to land on the very top, clutching her chest, and attempted to catch her breath. Another metal bird roared above her head, this one ascending into the heavens, and Guihua couldn't help but wonder if it's destination was the Heavenly Realm.

She walked across the whitish rock at the top of the spire she had landed on, approaching the edge, and looked down over a sort of railing to the world below.

Those black lines that she had thought to be creeks feeding into the river, they were crawling with humans! They must be solid roads. There were humans on foot, humans on wheeled carts, humans in metal palanquins. A solid mass of humanity crowded the streets below.

The morning sunlight reflected off of the mirrored sides of her spire, blinding her with the glare. A cacophony of noise rose up from the ground, reaching her faintly. The sounds of human voices she could recognize, but there were many sounds that she did not recognize at all.

Guihua sank to the ground, her legs would no longer support her. She clutched at the railing with her arms, and stared down into the unfamiliar, trying to make sense of the insensible. Searching desperately for anything that was familiar.

This monolithic forest of metal had grown up around her while she been asleep. The Unawoken trees that were her neighbors had been cut down around her, and she had been unaware of it, too deeply asleep to notice. It was miraculous that she had been spared. In this wide expanse of rock and steel, the patches of greenery were few and far between.

"Don't the humans know that they need trees in order to breathe?" Guihua murmured to herself, thinking of the symbiotic relationship between them. Humans breathe in the air that trees exhale. Trees take in the exhaust which humans exhale.

Guihua shook her head, feeling terribly concerned. What had Nuwa been doing while she was asleep? Why had the Unawoken plants been unprotected? Did something, perhaps, happen to Nuwa, that prevented her from fulfilling this Sacred task?

Guihua looked to the sky, her worry for her daughter overpowering her fear of the gargantuan metal birds that roared their passage above. She was just about to ascend once more, when a unexpected noise behind her made her pause. A human footfall crunched on the gritty sand that covered the top of this spire.

Guihua turned to look. There was something vaguely familiar about the human male who stood there, but she couldn't think what it reminded her of. She checked her invisibility spell, making sure it was still in place. The way the human stared in her direction was unnerving. It was like he knew that she was there.

Guihua rose silently into the air, hovering over the spire, and this man's gaze followed her! She saw his nostrils flare, as he sucked in a few short breaths through his nose. He could smell her!

Guihua gasped in alarm, and shot up into the heavens quickly, heading for the Fourth Level where the Flower Realm existed, the border between the Heavenly Realm and the Mortal Realm. She dreaded what she might find there.

"INFERNO OF LOVE" WILL BE CONTINUED ON WATTPAD BECAUSE I AM OUT OF SPACE ON THIS SITE. Find me on Wattpad @ Marlr3d


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